The cold hard reality for those who oppose Donald Trump is that on some level this will be a four year fight to run out the clock and ensure that his administration does as little harm as possible. Even if the Democrats sweep the midterms and then impeach Trump, they’ll still be stuck with “President Mike Pence” for the rest of the term – and they’ll have to run out the clock on him as well. But it turns out the Democrats may have already set up Pence to where he’d be crippled out of the gate.

The setup of Mike Pence centers around Michael Flynn. The Democrats knew Flynn was dirty, but there was nothing they could do at the time to prevent Flynn from becoming National Security Adviser; there are no confirmation hearings for that position. So Congressman Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, publicly posted a letter which detailed how Flynn had illegally taken money from an intermediary of the government of Turkey. And here’s the key – Cummings addressed the letter specifically to Mike Pence, and sent it to Pence’s office.

You can still see the letter on the House Oversight Committee website (link), dated November 18th. It’s addressed to solely Mike Pence, and not to Donald Trump or to the Trump transition team. This made it Pence’s sole responsibility to inform Trump that Flynn was a criminal, and to ensure that Trump didn’t go through with appointing Flynn as National Security Adviser. As we all know by now, Flynn ended up getting the job anyway, only to be pushed out twenty-four days later when evidence surfaced that he was even dirtier.

So now the Democrats have this in their back pocket. There’s nothing they can do with it right now, because they lack a majority. But if things go their way in the midterms, they can immediately begin the impeachment process against Trump on a whole host of crimes. Then after Mike Pence becomes President, they can use Pence’s Flynn scandal to spend the rest of the term keeping Pence hobbled. Or maybe the Democrats will just try to impeach them both simultaneously; at that point the Speaker of the House, next in line for the Presidency, would be Nancy Pelosi. Contribute to Palmer Report

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